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May 4, 2010

Scutaro Makes Contact

Something amazing and rare happened last night, and I'm not talking about the Red Sox pounding out 17 runs and 20 hits.

Marco Scutaro swung at a pitch and missed it. How rare is that?

He's done it only six times this year!*

*: By contrast, Kevin Youkilis swung and missed at five pitches in one game (April 11). I went to look at the 11th because it was David Ortiz's 4K game, but Flo missed only four pitches that day.

Going through my scorecards, I came up with 479 pitches to Scutaro. (Fangraphs has 480. Arrgg! I don't know where that missing pitch is, so I'm going to ignore it in the info below and go with my total.)

Scutaro's first swing and a miss came in the 5th inning on April 20 (G14), on his 230th pitch of the year. (Or maybe 231st.) It was during his 56th plate appearance.

That number also includes pitches taken for balls, not only swings. FG has broken down Scutaro's pitches seen as 195 balls and 285 strikes.

For the record, of the 479 pitches I have for Scutaro, he has swung and missed at #s 230, 251, 362, 378, 415, and 476.

7 comments:

So are you suggesting that he is taking too many pitches and should be swinging more, or are you suggesting that he always makes contact, whether he hits it foul or fair, whether it is an out or a hit?

Beltre's HR last night made me think of what an oddity his season has been. We thought he'd hit for low avg but with decent to good power. But that was only his first homer to go with 7 doubles. Really, he's been a singles machine (hitting .333).

Amy: Not suggesting anything, though he clearly hits the ball *somewhere* almost every time he swings. Just pointing it out how rare a swing/miss is. I think it's remarkable.

Maybe I should count swings. ... And assuming FG is right, that one missing pitch is bothering me!

I added that the first swing/miss was in his 56th plate appearance.

And it must have been mentioned at the time (we had NESN that night), because I have a little note by it on my scoresheet. Or maybe it wasn't and I went back the next day and wrote it in. It came in the game where the 0-for-32 RATS streak ended.